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It’s hard to know what to expect when a renowned actor makes an
appearance as a keynote speaker at a technology conference. When
Kevin Spacey was about to make his entrance onto the stage at
this year’s IBM Impact in Las Vegas I found myself wondering the
same thing.

After three days of hearing about clouds, "composable business"
and big data, you can only wonder what meaningful business
ideas may come from someone who has probably never set foot in a
data center, built a mobile application or architected the
enterprise of the future. I don't think I was alone in my
skepticism.

“How drunk are you people?’ Spacey asked as he took the stage. At
the last day of the conference, I’d say his humor wasn’t lost on
the crowd. In fact, it drew a big laugh. Then he asked the
question, “You probably wonder what the heck I’m going to tell
you about these devices and all of this technology? I don’t know
a f#cking thing about any of this!”

But what he does know about is how to disrupt markets and
industries that seem unyielding. Here is a few takeaways from his
keynote speech on the radical disruption that’s happening in
every industry.

Seek out the people willing to take a risk. When
Kevin Spacey pitched his idea of House of Cards to
various networks they all were interested in his show: politics,
sex and corruption -- a timeless formula for successful media.
But there was a problem: Every network he pitched wanted a pilot.

“We had an idea for a show that developed over a period of
time and a pilot wasn’t in the cards,” said Spacey.

Instead of pushing on the networks or changing his vision for the
show, he did something else. He knew he needed to find someone
who was willing to take a risk, so he pivoted and brought the
idea to the executives at Netflix. Spacey was solving a business
problem: He was disrupting and perhaps forever driving to change
the way content is delivered. Furthermore, he was looking at what
the industry is going to become, and he was responding and
leading change. In many ways he was an innovator. It was as if he
saw just a little glimpse of the future.

Try, try and try again. Netflix looked at
the concept and vision of the show and the team Spacey had built
and decided to give him a commitment for at least two seasons at
the time of inception.

This was a complete pivot from the norm. (In the world of
television this would never happen.) There was no proof that it
would work. But as Spacey said, no amount of data can predict the
future, It can just give you a good guess at probability. There
are just too many other factors -- particularly in entertainment.
“Sometimes you just have to throw things at the wall and see what
f#cking sticks.”

Of course, House of Cards is now a wildly successful
show and this is just one example of disruption that he gave.

It all comes down to the connection. It was
story after story that he told. Little stories weaved within big
stories. Such a good storyteller he is, it would have been easy
to forget why we were there in that room. We were there to learn,
create and grow our businesses -- primarily as technology
companies. It would only be fair to ask what did we learn from
Kevin Spacey? If we merely wanted to be entertained, we could
have watched a movie.

Spacey’s stories made disruption easy to understand to everyone.
It made the endless techno-garble of cloud, mobility, analytics
make sense as well, because he reminded the masses that in the
end those words, buzzwords if I may, aren’t the reason people
connect to brands. People connect to the story, and the way the
story is told is the way a brand is perceived.

As businesses we have to tell better stories. And we have to tell
them in a way that grabs the hearts and minds of our customers
and prospects.

In a world full of bits, bytes and jargon, the story may be the
most disruptive element of all, and those that tell their
story the best may just be surprised at how f#cking well
things work out for them going forward.